So what you're saying is my xpath needs to be written like this:

$doc->findnodes('//myns:root/myns:stuff/myns:items/myns:book');
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Given the following:

<root xmlns="http://goobar/xml" xmlns:myns="http://goobar/xml">
  <stuff>
    <items>
       <book>XML Namespaces</book>
    </items>
  </stuff>
</root>
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That is really an ugly xpath expression.